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Ubuntu Software Center To Be More Like Steam

Phoronix: Ubuntu Software Center To Be More Like Steam

Yesterday at UDS Budapest, Canonical and Ubuntu developers laid out their plans for the Ubuntu Software Center in the near future. Among their plans are to make this "software store" more like that of Valve's Steam client...

I am most certain it will be optional to login to the community. I also doubt they will require usernameassword for apt-get'ting stuff. So far the only thing that reminds me of apple is the design of the user interface and the philosophy with keeping in simple and sleek for the users...

They're just missing the point. What the Software Center needs, and what Canonical specifically needs, is to open up for individual developers (or small software firms) to get inexpensive but paid apps to the users. That would bring some money to Canonical AND to the developers. A business model around an open source platform for individual developers doesn't exist today (most business models in FLOSS are only good for bigger companies). That might be it.

Check BlueGriffon, for instance. They might sell their plugins on the paying area of the Software Center while having their main app available for download at the free area.

They're just missing the point. What the Software Center needs, and what Canonical specifically needs, is to open up for individual developers (or small software firms) to get inexpensive but paid apps to the users.

Those people can already have their software added to the Software Centre's paid section, so what exactly is missing?

reality

Canonical ISD has a backlog of work on its plate and isn't taking new work for a few months (unless super critical). So most of those features are a ways off/wishlist as they require a certain amount of new server infrastructure which is ISD's territory. Of course client-side items like further enhancing performance, localization, UI tweaks and improved search should all be visible this cycle.

The most interesting session as far as work items to land this cycle is probably the ratings and reviews session for s-c.

In general though most of the changes in s-c will not be that user-visible; a big code restructuring/cleanup is due and there is some pressure for a gtk3/gi port, but it's not clear yet if a decent gtk3 port is doable in just one cycle.